


hyung's heart is like a neoguri

by sullaem (himpoepoe)



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 15:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1610828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himpoepoe/pseuds/sullaem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jinki hyung’s inner energy was surprisingly lukewarm. wasn’t love supposed to be hot? wasn’t love something that simmered with enough heat to turn liquid into vapour, until eventually everything evaporated and met its destruction? how could hyung’s temperature be so mild?</p>
            </blockquote>





	hyung's heart is like a neoguri

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [형의 마음은 꼭 너구리같아](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/50021) by 손바닥괴물. 



> Author: 손바닥괴물 (sonbadack gwoemul)  
> Homepage: http://plam2plam.dothome.co.kr/  
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sonbadack
> 
> Please note that while I tried to stay as close to the original text as possible, at times I had to tweak the wording and/or punctuation to prioritize readability and tone over literal word-for-word translation (please refer to my note for [April Fool's Day](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1118547) for more on this topic). Any mistakes are mine and mine alone. Thank you so much to the amazing 손괴-nim for allowing me to translate her work! Also huge thanks to Alisha and Brittany for giving me feedback and being generally lovely :)
> 
> A "neoguri" (pronounced "nuh-gu-ree") is a Korean raccoon dog, which is like the Japanese tanuki and quite different from North American raccoons. I decided to keep the Korean term for it because I didn't want readers confusing it with regular raccoons. In Korean culture, we commonly refer to people with sly, crafty, mischievous personalities as being "neoguri-like."
> 
> "Banchan" means side-dish.
> 
> This work was originally posted Jan. 1st, 2012.

 

as partners in one team, we were inseparable for a number of years. when we started dorm life, it was nothing but fun thanks to the novelty of living together as a group -- at least for the first few weeks, that is. living with other people made me feel as if i’d become an actor on stage. whether i was eating, going to the bathroom, or sleeping, i felt the watchful eyes of some unknown presence. but the excitement brought on by my new and unfamiliar surroundings soon disappeared. 

after a few months had passed, i had my hyungs mostly figured out. and for a while, their actions all but supported the personalities i’d matched up to them. fascinatingly though, when a few more months had passed my hyungs began to infinitely unsettle and destroy the models i'd created of them in my mind. at unexpected moments, they'd behave in unexpected ways. time continued to pass; and now, going on five years of living with them, i didn’t believe that i truly knew my hyungs. i remembered and paid attention to their manners of speech, and small habits that they had so the time we'd spent together wouldn't go to waste. but i didn't think for a second that any of these things constituted the hyungs themselves as a whole.

 

 

the first thing i saw when i woke up this morning was kibummie hyung, who had fallen asleep with his eye mask on. his face had become slightly puffy from sleep. since he’d lost so much weight recently, rather than unflattering him, this only made him look more normal. when i walked out into the living room, the people who lived in the room across -- that is, minho and jonghyun -- had already come and taken over the space. minho hyung was unsuccessfully searching for something in front of the television and continually asking jonghyunnie hyung, “have you seen it? have you seen it?” meanwhile, jonghyunnie hyung was lying in front of his little laptop and replying to him absent-mindedly, as if minho hyung’s plaintive voice weren’t any of his concern. the bedroom door behind us swung open and kibummie hyung walked out with his hair in a bird’s nest, his big hand sweeping over his face. it seemed jinki hyung still hadn’t freed himself from the clutches of sleep.

this scene hadn’t changed at all from yesterday morning’s, and it wouldn’t be any different tomorrow.

 

“taeminnie, when are you leaving?”

 

jinki hyung finally walked out into the living room, rubbing away bits of sleep from the corners of his eyes. each step he took came away with the sticky traces of slumber. i’d been sitting around, long dressed up and waiting for manager hyung’s signal to leave when jinki hyung threw himself onto the sofa, tackling me in the process. even though i was the one who’d been attacked, it was jonghyunnie hyung sitting beside me who feigned injury and made a fuss. hyung’s body, which hadn’t been awake for long, was very warm.

with my arms wrapped tightly around him, hyung sank into an even deeper sleep. i smiled widely, like a child hugging a big, stuffed teddy bear. jonghyunnie hyung glanced over at us, but said nothing. this warm, languid happiness was soon lifted away along with jinki hyung, when he was carried off by manager hyung thanks to my individual schedule. 

 

“taeminah..”

 

hyung called my name longingly, as if it were the name of sweet, syrupy sleep.

 

“get up now. get up.”

 

i could hear jonghyunnie hyung’s voice as i put on my shoes. it sounded like he was scolding jinki hyung. but considering the fact he was bothering to wake him up at all, i couldn’t say it was only gruffness that filled his voice. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

watching my hyungs was amusing in all sorts of ways. the four of them were each so different that it made you wonder how such a group had ever gotten together. as everyone knew, minho hyung was exceedingly devoted to anything that provoked his competitive spirit. which was why whenever i played video games with him, i also ended up getting completely sucked into the game. i’d never looked at minho hyung’s burning competitive streak and considered it to be anything extraordinary; it was simply that relative to him, the rest of us -- myself included -- were severely lacking in competitiveness. if you wanted to find the next most competitive person after minho hyung when it came to video games, you might just barely be able to point me out. minho hyung was also generous and big-hearted. this was due to his belief that a man's caliber should require as much. the peculiar thing was that as time passed, minho hyung increasingly seemed to fulfill the qualifications of the man he aspired to be. more and more qualities were beginning to overlap between the idealistic standards he’d set and his actual current state.

then there was kibummie hyung. when i thought of kibummie hyung, the first image that popped into my head was the way he firmly said whatever was on his mind. i felt like i could hear his low, husky voice, along with its high, nasally tone at the same time. i also thought of the gestures he made with his hands as he spoke. when you put all of these images together, it revealed both hyung’s inferiority complex and his strong self-esteem, which could be built precisely because of his willingness to openly display his insecurities. what could possibly bring him down? kibummie hyung was also very strong-willed and determined. but this didn’t lead to any competitiveness, and that was because the object of his contemplation was always limited to his own self. thanks to hyung’s assertive personality, he was able to devote himself for long periods of time to things that didn’t lend themselves to immediate results or the ready acknowledgement of others. hyung, who enjoyed new things, even loved the fatigue that accompanied being somewhere unfamiliar for the first time. he also had a knack for acting like a new skill he’d just acquired had already been part of him since long ago. sometimes, when i watched hyung, i felt a thrill akin to unlocking a new skill level in a computer game.

next was the second oldest member out of all of us: jonghyunnie hyung. when i thought about hyung, my brain went into overdrive and worked more feverishly than ever. this was because as soon as i defined for myself what kind of person hyung was, contradictory traits started rolling out one after the other, like endless dishes in a full-course meal. that is to say, hyung was like the sun and moon, and east and west. he was the wind, and the warmth of sunlight. he was both the deep sea and the white sand of the beach. he floated meaninglessly through the void like a black plastic bag; meanwhile, he ripped through the air sharply like an arrow flying toward its target. he was cute while being sexy, and got angry while also being understanding at the same time. jonghyunnie hyung was warm and affectionate, but on the other hand, he was also quite cold and indifferent. then again, if you thought about it further -- yet _another_ characteristic emerged! so hyung was impossible to pin down as one thing. hyung ‘had’ everything. if i thought of jonghyunnie hyung, an infinite number of adjectives sprung out at once and they all suited him in some way or another. this wasn’t to say that he was indecisive or hard to read or that he didn’t have clear-cut characteristics. that was what made it all the more intriguing: jonghyunnie hyung was distinct. he even had a distinct scent of his own. it didn’t seem like he paid any particular attention to shower gels like kibummie hyung, yet there was always a unique scent around him that was set apart from everything else. i suspected this fragrance, which was quite cool and refreshing, to be the smell of his lotion.

let me talk about jonghyunnie hyung a little more. i didn’t necessarily think of masculinity and femininity as existing separately, but let’s say that there was a distinction. even in this regard, jonghyunnie hyung had everything. hyung was not solely masculine, but i also wouldn’t say he was feminine. he definitely wasn’t androgynous, either. so did that mean he had the appeal of both sexes? no, that still wasn’t adequate. hyung had the appeal of all sexes. it wasn’t like the kind of gift set you got that had individual, unrelated items packaged into one box. ultimately, those items didn’t form one whole -- and sooner or later, they got divided according to one’s personal taste. but jonghyunnie hyung was different. hyung, who ‘had’ everything, could only be ‘explained’ by everything, and so my brain just got too tired.

the reason i thought about jonghyunnie hyung twice as hard as the other hyungs -- despite feeling like my cerebral cortex was starting to chafe -- was because of jinki hyung. because i liked jinki hyung so much, it wasn’t easy for me to talk about him. it was difficult to even know where to begin. that didn’t mean i liked jinki hyung a disproportionate amount to the other hyungs. i liked, respected, and loved them all, but jinki hyung was special. to me, hyung’s existence was like an enormous tree. a tree the size of which i couldn’t fathom, no matter how far i tried to look up from beneath its shade. in some respects, hyung was also like a lullaby that i knew even before i was born. so even though he never revealed his whole self to me, he was someone i could always be at ease with; a disarming presence.

and i recently had the thought that jinki hyung was like a neoguri.

i wasn’t making the comparison just to say his appearance, or his behaviour, was cute. rather, i felt like there was something about jinki hyung that was sly and crafty, just like a neoguri.

truth be told, jinki hyung resembled all cute animals. and he looked like pretty much every kind of baby animal that existed. other than the few rare exceptions, baby animals were all cute, weren’t they? even baby moles and baby mice were cute. maybe arming them with cuteness to shield themselves until they grew up was god’s way of protecting them from the harsh law of the jungle, also known as survival of the fittest. i didn’t know if this concept of ‘cuteness’ actually held up in the wild, but in any case, jinki hyung was so cute that no one could ever dare harm him. that was why i thought he looked like most cartoon animals. he looked exactly like the koala character i was doing the voice acting for these days.

but the real reason i thought hyung was like a neoguri was because of his heart.

i liked jinki hyung the moment we first met. it was a feeling of blind goodwill i couldn’t control, and an overwhelmingly positive force. i was amazed that i could feel such a strong attraction to another person, and i couldn’t help but like jinki hyung all the more for bringing me this sense of wonderment. i didn’t consider this force to be a romantic energy, but if someone were to ask me if i would ever date hyung, or if hyung were to ask me to go out with him, i wouldn’t say no. but an important reason i was able to think this way was because i’d never really given much thought as to what being in a relationship actually meant.

to me, jinki hyung was like a role model. whenever i was suddenly faced with a difficult decision, i recalled hyung’s actions and thought about what he would do, the way animals’ young learned from watching their mothers. jinki hyung was warm, polite, and cheerful, and he never stepped out of bounds. he might have made the most mistakes on stage, but in our off-stage life he stumbled the least out of all of us. every time i hit a wall, i sought after hyung; even for the most small and insignificant matters, i asked for his advice and looked into his experiences. jinki hyung was the standard to which i evaluated myself and set my next goals.

if a little more time were to pass, it was possible that i’d realize my behaviour had been a burden to hyung. and if even more time passed, after all i’d watched and learned from him, maybe i'd be able to become the same kind of person to jinki hyung as he had always been to me. it was possible that my end goal was to become someone like jinki hyung, for jinki hyung.

jinki hyung was self-conscious about expressing his feelings. but this same hyung once patted me on the shoulder, saying, “i always feel reassured and confident thanks to taeminnie’s presence.” hyung probably had no idea, but for about a week after hearing him say that, i went around acting like a wise man who could understand and overcome anything.

so i grew up taking cover beneath jinki hyung’s shade, and listening to the sound of his lullaby, but it wasn’t until recently that i came to realize that hyung had liked someone for a very long time. how could i tell? hearing hyung’s low humming; watching the expression on his face as he woke up in the morning, rubbing his eyes and sitting so still, and so long, in deep contemplation under the covers; watching him repeat the cycle of taking new interest in something he didn’t care about before until eventually, though seeming to hold onto it for a while, abandoning it; seeing him smile from time to time for no apparent reason, and feeling the desire to hug him tightly because that smile somehow looked so lonely; and the way he patted my back in return when i hugged him so. maybe i could tell from these things.

this was all just my own conjecture, of course. a conjecture that happened to have higher validity, since it came from someone who liked hyung and grew up by his side.

jinki hyung’s inner energy was surprisingly lukewarm. wasn’t love supposed to be hot? wasn’t love something that simmered with enough heat to turn liquid into vapour, until eventually everything evaporated and met its destruction? how could hyung’s temperature be so mild? when i looked into hyung’s heart, i found it surrounded by an anxious and pressing energy, like water just below its boiling point.

as someone who was determined to learn everything through jinki hyung, discovering this part of him was extremely perplexing. within him, hyung was stubbornly not allowing anything to evaporate -- although that didn’t mean he’d turned off the heat altogether -- and harboring an energy that moved powerfully despite being invisible. if one waited long enough, wouldn’t this powerful energy eventually explode from within and reveal itself? i decided to wait. but even after many months had passed, hyung’s condition obstinately stayed exactly the same.

who was it that jinki hyung liked? and what kind of person were they? since it was hyung we were talking about, the person he liked had to be someone really incredible. there was no way a person who was just so-so would be able to penetrate his heart. hyung would never like someone who was just ‘whatever.’

but finding the target of hyung’s energy was so difficult that i was beginning to doubt whether i hadn’t made a mistake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

through watching my hyungs’ relationships, i realized that i was pretty uninterested in dating and romance. the other members teased me by saying this was because i was still young, but i didn’t think eighteen, nineteen was too young to be able to infer the peculiarities of romantic relationships. if i was too young, then my hyungs were no different. for me, trying to find someone i liked was kind of like trying to pick out a pair of shoes. when i looked at the rows of shoes on display at the shoe store, i had a hard time distinguishing one pair from another. a salesperson might show me something and explain that it had this feature and that, but i’d never looked at a pair of shoes on my own and thought, _wow, those shoes are really nice_. it was only when i chose a pair from the many similar -- yet slightly different -- pairs of shoes and tried them on that i was finally able to decide whether they were nice or not nice. or to be more precise, whether i liked them or didn’t like them. and ultimately, it was only when one person among a vast number of similar people became ‘my’ person, that i could finally think about what they meant to me. it was only within the circumference of ‘my belongings’ that i could discover the person’s beauty and also their imperfections.

i didn’t have a specific taste when it came to shoes, and even if i did, it would be near impossible to find a pair that matched it perfectly. moreover, since we received a lot of gifts, sometimes i had to wear shoes that didn’t even fit me properly. somehow, i found a way to force myself into shoes that were slightly too small or too big, and if i kept wearing them, my feet and the shoes eventually got along with each other pretty well. naturally, there was bound to be some pairs that would never fit. so perhaps meeting someone and getting into a relationship wasn’t so different from picking out a pair of shoes and wearing them. of course, i was speaking strictly from my own perspective.

in these obscure thoughts of mine, i knew the person jinki hyung liked would become quite an important figure for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

to back up a little, i said i talked a lot about jonghyunnie hyung because of jinki hyung. the reason i said this was because a few days ago, i very cautiously began to suspect that jonghyunnie hyung could be the source of the energy moving within jinki hyung. as you might expect, there was no strong reason or evidence to say this was true. it was possible that i was barking up the wrong tree and being illogical from thinking too hard about jinki hyung.

a little while ago, the five of us had gathered to eat together for the first time in a while to discuss our next schedule with manager hyung. minho hyung had been the first to arrive at the restaurant; he sat beside jonghyunnie hyung initially, but suddenly got up and moved to the seat across from him. i’d been coming in late and went to sit beside jonghyunnie hyung without another thought. i soon understood why minho hyung had switched places: jonghyunnie hyung’s arm and the back of his hand kept hitting me every time he took a spoonful of food or used his chopsticks. when i raised my hand to take some banchan and hit jonghyunnie hyung’s hand again, i snapped at him in a moment of irritation. from across the table, i saw jinki hyung look at me with a cold glare in his eyes.

 

“see. no one should sit to the left of jonghyunnie hyung.”  
“what! what! lee taemin, did you just snap at me?”  
“..it just came out instinctively. nevermind.”

 

as if he had been waiting for this moment, minho hyung started telling jonghyunnie hyung that he should at least have the courtesy to sit on the left side beforehand. “it’s not like this has only happened once or twice so why do you keep sitting on the right side first?” at this, jonghyunnie hyung lashed out at minho hyung in his usual way. “whether i sit on the right side or the left side, isn’t it my choice? is it too much to ask for that much freedom in korea?” i ate the rest of my dinner in a moody silence, preoccupied over the irritation i’d carelessly allowed to slip out, and jinki hyung’s reaction to it. meanwhile, jonghyunnie hyung didn’t seem to particularly care about my outburst.

but why were we suddenly discussing the fact that jonghyunnie hyung ate with his left hand? it wasn’t like he’d just started eating with his left hand yesterday, or like us eating together was only a one or two-time occurrence. how did we usually eat again? lost in thought, i abstractedly raised my head and looked at jinki hyung sitting across from me. he was eating spoonfuls of kimchi-jjigae in earnest, as if demonstrating that during meal times, one must only focus on the act of eating and nothing else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

a few days later, the five of us got together again to eat. sure enough, sitting to the left of jonghyunnie hyung was jinki hyung. i’d never realized it before but when we all ate together, eight or nine times out of ten it was jinki hyung who sat to the left side of jonghyunnie hyung. jonghyunnie hyung had so much to talk about with kibummie hyung across from him that it seemed like he was barely even eating, but he continued picking at his rice, intent to stay at the table until kibummie hyung was finished. and as always, jinki hyung was eating his banchan with an exceedingly solemn expression, showing once again the importance of pure devotion to the act of eating.

eventually, from my place across from jinki hyung, i saw it. the shallow wave that rippled across hyung’s face whenever jonghyun hyung’s left hand happened to hit his right hand. and the sunlight that swayed along the surface of those waves. jinki hyung didn’t scowl or complain about jonghyunnie hyung hitting him. on the contrary, he hid away his own presence as if nothing had happened and continued to focus on eating his food. no, let me rephrase that -- he continued _pretending_ to focus on his food. what jinki hyung was really absorbed in were the small moments of contact veiled behind the opportunity given by ‘meal time.’

jinki hyung’s lips quivered with the effort to hide the smile that automatically rose to his face. and watching that face, hyung’s heart seemed to me just like a sly and secretive neoguri. in the end, it appeared hyung intended to bear all of those feelings without telling another soul no matter what. for all those feelings to evaporate, a significant amount of time would have to pass. it looked like jinki hyung was raising his head, so i turned away. jonghyun hyung’s left hand went on the hunt for banchan once more and gently hit jinki hyung’s hand. at that moment, i could feel my heart throb in loud pulses.

 

 

would jonghyunnie hyung ever come to know the heart of a sly neoguri?

 

probably, he’d never know to the very last. that heart could only be understood and felt by someone like myself, who saw jinki hyung as an enormous tree, and grew up within his shade, listening to his lullaby. besides, jonghyunnie hyung wasn’t even remotely interested in jinki hyung. i’m not talking about the kind of interest he was obliged to take in him as a co-worker, but a deeper, personal interest. he was too busy bickering with minho hyung, and maintaining a relationship with kibummie hyung who required attention in all sorts of ways. not only that, but jonghyunnie hyung needed more time to himself than other people. he also needed to work on his songwriting. what’s more, hyung needed time for the internet!

 

however  
“get up now. get up.”

 

i finished putting on my shoes and got up at the entrance. jinki hyung was passed out near jonghyunnie hyung, who was lightly shaking his shoulder. jonghyunnie hyung started smacking him gently, making a noise like ‘ _e-yat, e-yat_.’ jinki hyung grabbed the arm that was pestering him and buried it under his own body. jonghyunnie hyung sighed and furrowed his brow, but didn’t pull out his arm. he put his laptop on top of jinki hyung’s back and quietly stared at the monitor. with his left hand placed in jinki hyung’s care, jonghyunnie hyung lifted his right hand and began tapping at his keyboard.

i was watching all of this in silence when suddenly, it occurred to me that perhaps jonghyunnie hyung already knew about everything. before i ever found out; since much longer ago. had he just been pretending not to know? actually, like jinki hyung, jonghyunnie hyung could also be full of another power that i hadn’t yet discovered. like i said, jonghyunnie hyung was a person who had everything.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The line _like endless dishes in a full-course meal_ is different in the original text. I altered it with permission from the author to make the simile sound more natural in English.
> 
> The expression "e-yat" is similar to "hi-yah."


End file.
